Dec. 12, 2021 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| I remember reading about his relationship with members of the administration before I came in and what a hard boss he is and he's menacing and angry and all these things that the press said about him. | ||
| And look, certainly he expected a lot from you. | ||
| And I would hope a president expects a lot from any staff. | ||
| But he was fun to work around. | ||
| He appreciated what I did. | ||
| He would always compliment me. | ||
| So it was kind of like a father-daughter situation in that I could tell he really cared about me as a person. | ||
| Still does. | ||
| And, you know, I loved him. | ||
| He was a great boss. | ||
|
unidentified
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(upbeat music) | |
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a former White House press secretary, | ||
| co-host of Outnumbered on Fox News and author of the brand new book, | ||
| For Such a Time as This, My Faith Journey Through the White House | ||
| and beyond, Kayleigh McEnany. | ||
| Finally, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| It's about time. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| We are long, long overdue for this conversation. | ||
| I've wanted to talk to you since you were press secretary, but I reference you on the show one way or another several times a week because I often play clips of Jen Psaki and then I juxtapose her with you. | ||
| But before we get to that, because I'm sure we'll have plenty of that type of stuff, can you tell me a little bit about your bio, which is partly what the book is about, just what kind of led you to becoming somebody that became press secretary, and then we'll get to the last couple of years. | ||
| Yeah, well, like many young conservatives across the country, I grew up listening to the great Rush Limbaugh, my dad's pickup truck. | ||
| I used to live in Plant City, Florida. | ||
| I drive to Tampa, where I went to school, and so I was really, just got this passion within me listening to Rush. | ||
| I loved politics from a young age, going back to when I was eight years old. | ||
| It just was Um, a burning desire. | ||
| And, you know, I worked, um, through media, through politics, started out at Fox News as a producer, left, got involved with Trump World and the RNC and the Trump campaign, and then the Trump White House. | ||
| And it just was kind of a step-by-step ladder progression, um, and one that I believe in the title you see, For Such a Time as This, that God wanted me there in that moment, for such a time as this, um, in that time, uh, during COVID-19 as press secretary. | ||
| So you were a conservative, basically, from eight years old and on? | ||
| Oh yes. | ||
| Born and raised a conservative. | ||
| It always made a lot more sense to me than the other side. | ||
| I've come to agree with you. | ||
| All right, so let's talk a little bit about the press secretary portion of this, because I find the press secretary, the job itself to me is like one of the most fascinating jobs on earth. | ||
| That in essence, you have an administration that has talking points, you have reporters that are supposed to be asking you contrarian questions, but in your case, it was like, it wasn't just contrarian questions, it was trying to basically destroy you guys every day. | ||
| What were some of your kind of guiding principles as you would, you know, go into that room every day? | ||
| So when I first thought about taking the job, you know, I came in and I thought, I'm going to give the press a chance. | ||
| I know who I'm up against. | ||
| This is the liberal media. | ||
| I know they're going to be unfair. | ||
| I've watched what they've done to Trump for three plus years. | ||
| But I said, let's give it a chance. | ||
| And I said, I'll have a red line. | ||
| Should they cross that red line of going personal with me, I'll be prepared to fight back, do so politely and gently and gracefully. | ||
| But I will fight back and I won't be pummeled and run over. | ||
| So My dad said to me, come up with a motto for your office. | ||
| And I said, offense only. | ||
| That's our motto. | ||
| We're going to be on offense. | ||
| We're not going to be the Republican that lays down and takes it. | ||
| We're not going to be the administration that, you know, loses an argument. | ||
| We're going to be the administration that brings the truth to the American people, but brings what I think is what is needed most with this press corps, accountability with a capital A. We'll read their headlines to them because I believe in accountability. | ||
| So we'll fight back, offense only. | ||
| That was our motto. | ||
| It's the whole title of a chapter in my book. | ||
| So you did just that. | ||
| I mean, you would read headlines back to them. | ||
| You would call them out on stories that they butchered or ignored. | ||
| You'd show video clips. | ||
| I mean, nobody really, I don't think, did that before you. | ||
| And Saki certainly doesn't do it since. | ||
| Show video clips exposing the nonsense that they were putting forth. | ||
| Did you feel like you were getting through to them or that they just, I mean, as most of my audience, I think, believes at this point, they just have their agenda. | ||
| They were there to destroy you and they're basically there to now protect the administration. | ||
| Yeah, I think I did get through to them. | ||
| I think I remember as my second briefing, it was the first time that I kind of read headlines back to them, because I told you that red line was crossed. | ||
| Jeff Mason asked a very personal question, a out of context video clip that based on a remark that I made before COVID hit back when Fauci was out there saying, oh, COVID has a miniscule threat to our country. | ||
| I was echoing that same line. | ||
| And they took that and asked me about it in briefing number two. | ||
| You know, I had conveniently just read all of their misinformation on COVID literally right before going to the podium. | ||
| So I had that tabbed and ready to go. | ||
| And Jeff Mason, who's actually a nice person, so I feel bad that he was the one that the headline reading happened to. | ||
| But, you know, I could see the audible shock on their faces because I was told coming into the job, half of your job is to work for the press, half of it's to work for the president. | ||
| But when the press stopped working for the people, Who I'm ultimately working for. | ||
| My job's not have to work for the press anymore. | ||
| My job's to work for the American people. | ||
| And to me, that meant reading the headlines. | ||
| I do think it broke through to them at least a little. | ||
| What was the stress like, just like personally? | ||
| I mean, it's not the, it's probably not the most fun job on earth. | ||
| I'm sure you get some kicks out of it and there's some fun moments, but like, you know, you were basically enemy number one for these people because you were, you know, sort of guarding Trump in essence. | ||
| Yeah, I mean there were definitely stressful days. | ||
| Like one that comes to mind is I was literally about to go to the podium. | ||
| I think it was one o'clock and the Woodward book dropped. | ||
| The audio recordings on CNN. | ||
| So you can imagine I prepared a whole briefing on whatever else the news of the day was. | ||
| Moments before my briefing. | ||
| It's almost as if CNN had planned it. | ||
| The days drop and so very little time to prepare. | ||
| I didn't have time to call people across the administration. | ||
| Just had to do the best I could. | ||
| So days like that are stressful, but I will say we had a lot of fun and I think that's why I believe my press shop excelled is because we had fun with the press. | ||
| We love brainstorming all the ridiculous things they could ask us and oftentimes we would find the absolute hardest question to answer. | ||
| We identify it, but because Most of them don't do their homework. | ||
| Usually the hardest question was never asked. | ||
| So I've heard you answer this question before, but can you talk a little bit about what Trump's relationship with you was like? | ||
| Because you were basically the filter to the press if he wasn't just jumping on Twitter. | ||
| Yeah, so he was very appreciative of me. | ||
| I think he loved the way I held the press accountable and liked my style. | ||
| So, I mean, I remember reading about his relationship with members of the administration before I came in, and what a hard boss he is, and he's menacing and angry and all these things that, you know, the press said about him. | ||
| And look, certainly he expected a lot from you, and I would hope a president expects a lot from any staff. | ||
| But he was fun to work around. | ||
| He appreciated what I did. | ||
| He would always compliment me. | ||
| So it was kind of like a father-daughter situation in that I could tell he really cared about me as a person. | ||
| Still does. | ||
| And, you know, I loved him. | ||
| He was a great boss. | ||
| So when you compare your experience to then what you're covering on Outnumbered every day and some of the other stuff that you're doing on Fox with what goes on with Saki, I mean, I play clips of her every week. | ||
| It is so clear to me that she doesn't believe what she's saying. | ||
| She can't, I mean, my line is always, if you asked her what her favorite color was, she would say four. | ||
| She cannot say something true. | ||
| She said, and you can read it on her face. | ||
| What do you make of the job she's doing, the way the press is treating her? | ||
| If it wasn't for Peter Doocy, I mean, nobody would be giving her a confrontational question. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| I mean, comparison, you know, she was asked about the White House cat, the White House dog being involved in a fighting incident, the airport's fun color scheme. | ||
| I mean, I was asked about- The drapes! | ||
| The drapes! | ||
| Don't forget about the drapes! | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| I mean, yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| But what is frustrating is she can say things like Republicans wanted to fund the police. | ||
| She can say things like no Americans are stranded in Afghanistan. | ||
| She can say these verifiably false things, which no press secretary should be able to say because they're just simply not truthful. | ||
| And then you compare that and they just let her get away with it. | ||
| Very few fact checks. | ||
| Compare that to when I said the science should not get in the way of opening schools because the science is on our side. | ||
| Jim Acosta can take the first half. | ||
| The science should not get in the way. | ||
| Make it go viral on Twitter, MSNBC. | ||
| It will be on every Chiron when it's the direct opposite of what I was saying, that they just remove the context. | ||
| In that case, even Jim Tapper You spoke out on my behalf. | ||
| But my point is, in one you can tell abject falsehoods, in the other you can do your best to report as truthfully as you can the accounts of what's going on in the White House, but you'll still be taken out of context because you've got that R behind your name for Republican. | ||
| Right, so I don't want to make this personally about her, but what do you make of someone that could do that job? | ||
| Like, it's just so obvious to me she knows she's lying every bit of it. | ||
| Like, do you think that that's just one way to do the job? | ||
| Yeah, I think if you're a Democrat, it's a very low bar. | ||
| So Jen Psaki can go out there, I think, and she can say, the sky is red, the grass is blue, and the street I just drove down today was purple, and the press will just not blink an eye. | ||
| You know, they sing happy birthday to one another. | ||
| I can tell you a whole lot. | ||
| I think there were baked goods transacted, I believe, I could be mistaken, during one briefing. | ||
| So I think she gave them cookies or something. | ||
| But my point is, that's the kind of cozy, coddling relationship, which, you know, I had diplomatic relationships with like some members of the press, like, who are great, like Steve Holland's a great example. | ||
| But by and large, I don't think Jim Acosta would be singing me Happy Birthday or Caitlin Collins or anyone like that. | ||
| For the record, that was the most depressing singing of happy birthday that I've ever heard in my life. | ||
| I mean, they did not have their hearts in it. | ||
| What do we do about the press? | ||
| Because I spend more of my time, I think, talking about the press and the mainstream media more than I do about politics specifically. | ||
| I actually find that far more interesting. | ||
| It's like politics sort of is what it is, but it's the filter that's more interesting to me because that's what shapes how we all act and behave and think about all of it. | ||
| Yeah, it fascinates me. | ||
| I think, you know, one of, I guess, my deep, deep frustrations is the fact, you know, I brought accountability from the podium. | ||
| I obviously had a massive platform to do it. | ||
| You know, CNN and MSNBC had to report on the things I was saying, even if they contorted it. | ||
| Um, but now, you know, being in the private sector, uh, the megaphone's less and it's easy to, you don't have a Republican press secretary, to let go all of these stories that have been proven false. | ||
| That day in and day out, I told the press so I was blue in the face. | ||
| No, Trump, there were not Russian bounties on the heads of troops in Afghanistan that Trump ignored. | ||
| No, he did not gas and pummel protesters to take a photo shoot at the church. | ||
| These things have now been proven false, But there's just virtually no reporting. | ||
| There's no megaphone like the White House podium to shout that these narratives are false. | ||
| But I think the best thing viewers can do is share with your friends, hey, no, that Lafayette Square thing, yeah, that didn't happen. | ||
| It wasn't as reported. | ||
| The inspector general found otherwise. | ||
| The COVID lab leak theory Trump was so crazy to proffer, in fact, now looks to be true or at least plausible. | ||
| So, you know, I think we've got to have accountability even in the aftermath. | ||
| And that means all of us using our tiny megaphones to create a very big one. | ||
| Did any of the lies get to Trump? | ||
| I mean, the very fine people one, to me, that's what Joe Biden used in his campaign launch video, that Trump defended the neo-Nazis. | ||
| And it's like, no, he literally said, I am condemning the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis. | ||
| When he said fine people, he meant fine people on both sides of the debate about statues, generally speaking. | ||
| Did any of that get to him? | ||
| Or he was just like, that's what it is? | ||
| Yeah, I think, you know, he's so used to, at this point, you know, four years in, he was so used to the tired, old, false, defamatory labels of, you're a racist, you're a bigot, all of this. | ||
| Like, he was used to those narratives. | ||
| I think the only time that I really saw something get to him, and I'm sure that got to him in the raw heat of the moment, you know, years prior before I came, But the one thing that I saw really good to him was when there was the reporting from the Atlantic that Trump had called our fallen heroes, our fallen military men and women, suckers and losers. | ||
| It's the one time I saw a negative story just become an obsession of his because it was just so not true so deeply hurtful he kept saying over and over again what kind of monster would do that we had two dozen sources on the record with their names on it saying this was not true um but they ran with the egregious lie because they were trying to cleave away the military base that is strongly supportive of trump away from him so you know his taxes that rolled off of his shoulder he didn't care the new york times hit pieces about his taxes but he did deeply care about that | ||
| In retrospect, now that he's not president, do you guys think that there were mistakes made along the way? | ||
| Or that you could have done something different in messaging or anything like that? | ||
| You know, looking back, I don't think so. | ||
| I'm very proud of the work we did. | ||
| Sure, you know, any time I wish I would have had more time to deal with the Woodward story, but I can't help when CNN drops something. | ||
| You know, I'm someone who, the thing that I like the least is when I don't have time to prepare. | ||
| I had the thick binder, obviously. | ||
| So, you know, I'd spend hours and hours and hours. | ||
| So when there was a new story, you know, I'd regret not having extra time to prepare. | ||
| But no, I don't think anything I said was a mistake. | ||
| I'm very proud of what we did. | ||
| I'm very proud of what President Trump did. | ||
| How is it for you being on the other side now? | ||
| I mean, now you're on a daily show for an hour. | ||
| I go on every couple of weeks. | ||
| You get to fully share your opinions that I assume you don't have to run by anybody else. | ||
| And you're obviously pretty uncensored as is, but just being in, now you're in the media. | ||
| You used to be on the other side, now you're in the media. | ||
| How's that shift been for you? | ||
| It's a lot of fun. | ||
| Um, it is, but you know, I guess being in this each and every day in a different way, uh, you know, I just watched, I sit beside Harris Faulkner and I see what an amazing journalist she is and you've been on with us on Outnumbered and how painstaking she is and getting her details and her facts right. | ||
| And I guess it's just, um, even a little bit more frustrating to watch how A good journalist operates, and then to have to report on how the bad journalists operate, like Cuomo, if you can call him that. | ||
| Right. | ||
| No, you can't. | ||
| Well, you can use air quotes, then you can. | ||
| Air quotes, exactly. | ||
| But no, I love it. | ||
| I mean, being in the private sector is a lot of fun. | ||
| I get more time with my daughter. | ||
| I get to come on Outnumbered with you and podcasts like this. | ||
| So it's a different vibe for sure, but a fun one. | ||
| Are you enjoying the collapse of CNN the way the rest of us are? | ||
| I mean, you have to talk about it. | ||
| When I was on Outnumbered last week, we talked about it with all the Cuomo nonsense. | ||
| It's kind of what they deserve. | ||
| Yeah, what's weird is like I was at CNN for a year and a half about, and it was during the 2016 election, so like I know these guys pretty well. | ||
| Every single night I sat on the set with, you know, it was Anderson Cooper usually, but I would go on often to do Don Lemon. | ||
| I'd wake up and do New Day with Chris Cuomo, so it's weird because I knew these guys. | ||
| And yeah, it's kind of It's your comeuppance, if you will. | ||
| I mean, I remember being on with Chris Cuomo, and a lot of people have forgotten, but we had a rather viral exchange where he demanded that I call President Trump a liar. | ||
| Like, demanded. | ||
| It went on for like 20 minutes, and then he ended by saying, you've lost all credibility with our viewers. | ||
| I don't think we can ever have you back because you won't call Trump a liar. | ||
| And it's just so ironic now to know that he was lying to his viewers about using his media contacts, but yet he was this, like, This paragon of virtue shouting down Trump campaign personnel because he was so noble and forthright and honest. | ||
| And clearly that was not the case. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you make of just sort of what's happening broadly on the right right now? | ||
| Like it seems to be, there's like, it seems very wide tent to me in some ways. | ||
| And then there, it also feels like, well, as we get a little closer to the midterms and then to 2024, depending on what Trump does, it could all be meaningless, whatever we're seeing right now. | ||
| Yeah, look, obviously 2022 is the most important and that will determine, I think, a lot of what happens in 2024 because it should be a total shellacking of Democrats next November and Republicans take back the House and hopefully the Senate as well. | ||
| But assuming that plays out how most people think it will play out, We'll see. | ||
| If Trump decides to throw his name in the arena, I think he's going to be a very difficult candidate to beat, given that he's got sky-high popularity in the Republican Party and an incredible track record. | ||
| He had four successful years. | ||
| And you can just contrast that to the one-year Biden. | ||
| That's pretty clear. | ||
| But the great thing, we have the deep bench in our party. | ||
| We have Ron DeSantis. | ||
| I mean, he's the best, like literally the best. | ||
| Tim Scott's incredible. | ||
| I mean the list goes on and on. | ||
| We've got such a deep bench and you compare that to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris who is now we know like a madman attacking her staff verbally and like vastly incompetent. | ||
| So these two aren't it and they're looking to Pete Buttigieg but outside of this like A handful of five people. | ||
| Who do they have? | ||
| They have no one, and we have a really deep bench, so we'll see. | ||
| The voters ultimately decide, but between Trump, DeSantis, Tim Scott, many others, Pompeo, a great bench. | ||
| So I've been asking everybody this, but are you surprised how quickly this thing got so bad? | ||
| I mean, we're only 11 months into this and supply chain shortages, obviously all the stuff with COVID, mandates, just gas prices, inflation, the whole thing, like across the board. | ||
| I just don't know where you could point to something and be like, oh no, it is going well. | ||
| I have to say, I am rather shocked. | ||
| And for the first few months of the Biden administration, they were trying to put on this act of the adults are in the room now. | ||
| Rest easy, breathe easy. | ||
| We have brought back politeness and friendship with our allies. | ||
| And we're going to be praised by Macron of being back on the world stage. | ||
| And just they had a lot of people fooled for about four or five months. | ||
| And then Afghanistan happened. | ||
| And I said at the time, this is a turning point. | ||
| Unmistakably, this is a turning point for this administration. | ||
| And from Afghanistan, the polling started to go south. | ||
| And then everything else started to crumble bit by bit by bit to the point where today I see the Wall Street Journal poll 41% approval, 30% among independents. | ||
| So I didn't think it would get this bad this quick. | ||
| And in addition to that, have voters totally wake up and say, wow, we recognize how bad it is. | ||
| And for those kind of numbers to be here, In December, it just shows you it's not just the pundits noticing, people are really feeling it at home. | ||
| Yeah, so I wanna back up a little bit. | ||
| You talked a little bit about COVID for just a moment there, but as everything was starting to unfold, which in crazy, I mean, it's crazy to think about. | ||
| Basically two years ago at this point, we're two years into this. | ||
| Can you talk about what that was like at the beginning as you guys are getting information, as Fauci's telling you things, as the CDC's telling you things, Trump is, you know, saying close the border with China, they're calling him racist, just like the complete chaos of like the first couple months. | ||
| Yeah, it was total chaos, because when I showed up in the White House, we were in a nationwide lockdown. | ||
| I mean, it was the beginning of- Oh, right, wait. | ||
| So you started when, in March, or? | ||
| Yeah, I started, I think it was technically April, but yeah, in March I got appointed, but yeah, April. | ||
| So yeah, nationwide lockdown, it was kind of jarring, certainly jarring. | ||
| And I can tell you this, like no one wanted to not be in a lockdown more than President Trump, the businessman. | ||
| It was literally killing him having to do this. | ||
| Um, you know, you had someone who I think knew how to handle and balance economic interest and health interest. | ||
| I think he did a great job. | ||
| And this president, I mean, look at the vaccine mandate that he's doing. | ||
| That's just killing American businesses. | ||
| And de Blasio tries to outshine him by doing a stricter one. | ||
| Um, you know, it was, it was definitely strange to be in there, I will say at that time. | ||
| Um, but I, I think. | ||
| The president did a good job. | ||
| He doesn't get a lot of credit for it. | ||
| I mean, I was there and Jared Kushner told me, you know, there was a point where, like, we were scared. | ||
| You know, are there enough ventilators in this country? | ||
| Imagine the thought of having to ration ventilators. | ||
| But the way that Jared Kushner and President Trump were able to mobilize the private sector to, you know, we not be so dependent on foreign countries, but mobilize it jumpstarted to where we didn't have a ventilator shortage. | ||
| We ended up getting in 95 masks. | ||
| And we were able to use a businessman and the ingenuity that comes with that to escape some rather scary scenarios that it's hard to imagine it could be worse than the number of people who have perished already, but I think it could have been worse if not for the ingenuity of some of the great people in the administration. | ||
| Did you have reservations about Fauci and the CDC and the NIH and everything, like, as they were first giving you all the information? | ||
| Because if you look back two years ago, everybody, myself included, we were all listening at the beginning. | ||
| Like, everybody was like, yes, I'll wash my bags when I come home from the supermarket and I'll put gloves on when I go to Costco. | ||
| Like, we all did all of the stuff, which in retrospect, for me at least, seems completely ridiculous at this point. | ||
| Yeah, retrospect, it does. | ||
| I mean, I think, as you said, when I first got in there, you know, we had the Coronavirus Task Force led by Vice President Pence and, you know, Fauci would give his opinion and Dr. Birx and, you know, everyone would give their opinion and you're just trying to take in information and consume as much as you can. | ||
| So I think, You know, for me early on, I was just taking in the information, getting the words of doctors, comparing what Azar was saying to Burks, to Fauci, to, you know, the different people who had stakes in the game, FDA, Dr. Hahn. | ||
| But I mean, I think it became alarming to me when Dr. Fauci, you know, you'd get the media lineup and this man would be on like, A thousand different things and like Facebook's and I'm like, how does he have time for science when he's literally doing like a Facebook live right now with some person? | ||
| And I, it just, I, I think the, uh, level of media that, that he was doing, and I get that getting scientific information out there to the public is important and part of the job, but I don't think it should be all the job. | ||
| And he was doing a whole lot of media and, um, contradicting different people in the administration. | ||
| And it just kind of became a headache. | ||
| What do you think we should think of him at this point? | ||
| What do you make of him? | ||
| I mean, two years in, it doesn't seem like it's going that well, according to them. | ||
| I will say I don't know that I was shocked, per se, because I think a lot of Dr. Fauci's kind of undoing of public trust came in the aftermath of the administration, not so much, you know, right when I was there. | ||
| Because as you said, we were all just taking in the science at that point. | ||
| I think as we've had time away from it, we can see, okay, wait, he was no mask. | ||
| Then he was one mask. | ||
| Then he was two masks. | ||
| Then don't mask if you're vaccinated. | ||
| Now back to one mask. | ||
| And we can all know that that doesn't make sense. | ||
| And then I was just very alarmed when I see him have these exchanges with Rand Paul about gain-of-function research, only to find out in his emails he was talking about gain-of-function research. | ||
| And, you know, I'm paraphrasing and very broadly summarizing it here. | ||
| He argues he was not. | ||
| But I think as that came out and we started to see some of those emails, all the pieces kind of fit together as to who Dr. Fauci was and is. | ||
| And he has some real questions to answer about what he told Congress. | ||
| Do you think it matters if you lie to Congress anymore? | ||
| I mean, there's so many instances of high-level people lying to Congress, whether it's, you know, Zuckerberg or Jack at Twitter talking about shadow banning or algorithmic tricks or whatever else, or the former CIA director, we don't spy on Americans wittingly as he's scratching his head because he knows he's lying, or Fauci with some of the gain-of-function stuff. | ||
| Like, do you think it, does the system function well enough to do anything if you actually lie to Congress? | ||
| Well, I mean, in effect, it matters if you are a person on the right, you know, if you're Michael Flynn, and I talked about his case a lot at the podium, you know, if you're Michael Flynn, the National Security Advisor, and the deep state doesn't like how you operate, they can corner you in your office. | ||
| Not tell you to get a lawyer and essentially try to prosecute you and use a statute that they've not used to prosecute anyone before. | ||
| I think it was the Logan Act. | ||
| I mean, this is just incredible stuff. | ||
| But if you're Dr. Fauci or several of the other people you named, then yeah, it does matter. | ||
| And there should be one standard. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, Fauci's got to answer those questions. | ||
| He argues it was not gain-of-function research, but Rand Paul says it is. | ||
| Yeah, all right, so let's shift a little bit to the book, because I like the title. | ||
| For a time such as this, it's like, we are living in extraordinary times. | ||
| You know, people think it's a Chinese, well, it's a curse, in essence. | ||
| May you live in interesting times. | ||
| People think that's a good thing, but they sort of mean it as a curse. | ||
| Do you think we're living in something that's really unique, that is different than, you know, every four years they tell us, well, this is the most important four years? | ||
| It does seem like something's a little different this time around. | ||
| Something is very different. | ||
| I mean, we saw an entire country collapse that we were in for two decades, Afghanistan, which is literally on the verge of economic collapse as well. | ||
| I mean, COVID-19 never ending and the left seizing upon it to have these Orwellian rules. | ||
| I mean, we are in a very different time and a polarizing time where the right and the left Um, just don't see, uh, the same set of facts even, it seems, or have much in common, uh, to say the least, where you have the left trying to destroy the American flag and what our country stands for. | ||
| I do think this is an aberrational time. | ||
| And definitely when I went into the administration, you know, I said for such a time as this, and a reference to the book of Esther, because I went in during a COVID-19 pandemic, Just before the murder of George Floyd, where riots took over the nation. | ||
| I mean, it was unexpected, to say the least. | ||
| The commander in chief getting a novel coronavirus pathogen. | ||
| I mean, just story after story. | ||
| And then a Supreme Court justice passing just before A presidential election and then Amy Coney Barrett coming in. | ||
| I mean, this was a crazy time. | ||
| And I believe I was put there for a reason, for a purpose. | ||
| And my dad said to me, remember, you're here for such a time as this. | ||
| And then Democrat CNN commentator Van Jones texted me separately that same message, which I thought was interesting and I was meant to hear. | ||
| By the way, Van is one of the great Democrats who's out there. | ||
| Despite his political leanings, he's just a really decent and great person. | ||
| Yeah, there's not many decent liberals left, but I guess he's in that small pool. | ||
| Although, I don't know him personally, so this is not an attack on him personally, but he still comes off with this woke stuff and you're just like, come on man, you're supposed to be one of the good ones. | ||
| I disagree with him on all that, but yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Let's talk a little bit about your faith because you've talked about it a little bit here and obviously it's a big part of your life and much of what the book is about. | ||
| So how does your faith sort of frame the way you approach your job and your life? | ||
| You know, you were showing pictures with your daughter in the White House and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| Yeah, it's important to me because, look, it's easy to go about your day when things are going well in your life and just plow on forward. | ||
| You have a long list of things to do. | ||
| But I think sometimes we're presented with kind of downturns in life. | ||
| For me in the White House, it was challenging when the president got COVID. | ||
| There were many challenges of the stresses of the job. | ||
| Um, leaving my daughter in Florida, you know, all of the, my health situation where I got the BRCA2 genetic mutation, which puts you at high risk for breast cancer, all of the like kind of down parts of my life. | ||
| And I wouldn't say the White House was a down part, but there are certainly down moments. | ||
| Those are the times where, um, as I noted to you, Van Jones and my dad saying the same thing, God pounds a message to my head and very clearly speaks To me, through other Christian men and women. | ||
| So for me, it's been paramount. | ||
| It's the only reason I could go to the podium on that first day of my briefing. | ||
| I was actually in my office crying instead of being out at the podium because I was so nervous, but got on the speakerphone, prayed with my family, and I had absolute serenity when I got there because not anything I did, but because of the peace of Christ within me. | ||
| Do you think we're in some kind of spiritual crisis, sort of as a country or maybe even as a world right now, that has led us to, or at least led so many people to believing that government in essence is God, that that is the thing that is above you that you must bow to? | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| People have many gods besides the one true God, and that's a problem. | ||
| You know, I saw it was disappointing that the millennial generation is increasingly becoming detached from faith. | ||
| Fewer people are going to church. | ||
| I saw that recently too. | ||
| And what do you see go alongside that? | ||
| The breakdown of family. | ||
| A lot of the violent crimes we see at the heart of it is the breakdown of a family, not having good parents that you look to in life. | ||
| All spurring from not having a heavenly father, not having an earthly family, and then you see some of the outrageous things we see that, you know, we cover in news where I'm literally having stomach churns on Friday as we hear about Ethan Crumley, and I hate even saying his name, who killed fellow students at school. | ||
| his parents and their culpability in all of it. | ||
| So, you know, you see these things happen. | ||
| And I think when you divorce yourself from faith, from the family unit, there's a downstream effect. | ||
| And some of the craziness we're seeing in questioning Darrell Brooks, | ||
| driving into a crowd of people, a walk a shot stems from something so much bigger. | ||
| And I think certainly spiritual, and those are just the downstream effects. | ||
| Yeah, what do you think we do about that? | ||
| I think as a nation, we've got to have, you know, people are gonna think I'm a crazy Southern Baptist girl, | ||
| I am so thankful, but we need a spiritual revival in this country. | ||
| We need to get back to the basics. | ||
| We need to get back to being with our families, getting off social media, getting off the video games for the kids and having family dinners. | ||
| That's what we do in my house. | ||
| You know, every night when I go up and Take my daughter, baby Blake, to bed. | ||
| She sits on my lap. | ||
| We kneel by her crib and we say a prayer. | ||
| We sit at our family kitchen table and I'm really bad. | ||
| I'm the worst in my family about being on my device. | ||
| But my husband, you know, he'll ask me every Sunday, what's your screen time this week? | ||
| And it's always up. | ||
| We put that aside and then we have our family dinners and I think if each every family got back to those basics and we just had basic kindness where we complimented other people and tried to see the best in people rather than looking at the viral Twitter trolls and giving them an outside space in our minds go a very long way. | ||
| Is there a role for government in any of that stuff? | ||
| Because, you know, you referenced earlier when Biden came in, he kept saying, we're going to heal now. | ||
| And it's like he meant, you know, he was saying H-E-A-L, but he really meant H-E-E-L, that we were all going to heal to him and bow to him. | ||
| Could we use, like, is there anything government could do to foster a little bit of that? | ||
| Or has the ship just sailed on that, do you think? | ||
| I mean, that's a great question. | ||
| Ultimately, I think it's a question that's so much bigger than government. | ||
| I mean, Biden, as you noted, you know, he came in and he said unity like 10 times in a speech. | ||
| And he's been the most non-unifying president, like attacking Trump people and Republicans. | ||
| And just, I think he's been caustic. | ||
| He's made the divisions worse. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't think that there's really a place for government. | ||
| I mean, certainly Certainly, what Trump did, creating opportunity zones, helping to ease people's economic burdens, that helps in some way. | ||
| But ultimately, I think it's a question that's so much bigger than government. | ||
| Not all of our answers lie there. | ||
| Yeah, what else? | ||
| So faith, politics, what else? | ||
| And family, obviously, is very important to you. | ||
| I mean, what else interests you these days? | ||
| Like when you wake up and you gotta do the daily show and do the hits and all that, what else is kinda on your mind? | ||
| Polling. | ||
| Does that make me boring? | ||
| I mean, I love, I, it's weird. | ||
| I love, um, I don't know if you're this way, but I certainly am like where my job is my passion. | ||
| So like when I, people say, what's your hobby? | ||
| Like my husband's an avid duck hunter. | ||
| Um, and I had to interview with the duck dynasty guys today, which was a lot of fun. | ||
| Yeah, but he loves he has a hobby. | ||
| But like my hobby is my job. | ||
| So I mean, outside of like watching bad TV sometimes, like, I don't know, The Bachelor or something. | ||
| I mean, I just I love my job. | ||
| I eat and breathe it. | ||
| And my family, as you noted, love going to the beach. | ||
| I'm a Florida girl born and raised. | ||
| Still am a Florida girl. | ||
| And you know, outside of that kind of stuff. | ||
| I got to tell you, I love polling. | ||
| I love watching the Biden numbers go down. | ||
| I hate it for our country. | ||
| I don't It's a country to be going in the wrong direction, but if Biden's polling numbers are going down, I enjoy watching accountability. | ||
| So as a Florida girl who now is up in New York for your Fox gig, so you're really living in two very, very like starkly different places. | ||
| How much do you see that just in terms of interacting with people and just the day-to-day life that when you're in Florida the way it is versus how it is in New York? | ||
| Yeah, it's interesting going back and forth because I'll never forget the first time I came to New York after a long while. | ||
| I used to come here a lot on the campaign because this was obviously the center of the media universe, so I would come and do interviews. | ||
| But when I went to the White House, you know, you get on Air Force One, you drop down into a city, drop down into a city, you don't leave the airport. | ||
| He was doing hangar rallies. | ||
| You know, for more than a year, I had not been in New York. | ||
| And, you know, I had been in Florida, where it's an open state. | ||
| People were out at the beach. | ||
| People were being normal. | ||
| People were walking around and talking. | ||
| Even at the beginning of COVID, when we were in lockdown, people were still going outside. | ||
| We obviously wouldn't go breathe on each other, but people were going outside and walking their dogs and saying hi to the neighbors. | ||
| And, you know, it just was friendly. | ||
| Businesses didn't shut down for the most part. | ||
| There was a slight shutdown of restaurants and hair salons and whatnot. | ||
| Generally speaking, it was normalcy. | ||
| And then I flew up to New York with my husband, got on an airplane, and they were like, here, you got to fill out these forms. | ||
| And I was like, forms? | ||
| What forms? | ||
| And the forms were like writing down your COVID symptoms. | ||
| And I landed in New York, and it was just like desolation and cold. | ||
| And it was just like such a contrast. | ||
| And this was More than a year into COVID-19 that I made this New York venture and just the contrast, I mean, which world do you wanna live in? | ||
| I think the answer lies in the fact of how many people have fled New York to go to the great state of Florida. | ||
| Yeah, I wonder, was that the same day we met for the first time? | ||
| It was the debut night of Gutfeld. | ||
| I hadn't been in New York City since COVID had began. | ||
| I remember the streets were desolate, cops everywhere, barricades everywhere. | ||
| We met in the green room and then they wouldn't, They wouldn't powder me because of COVID, but you were a Fox employee, so they were willing to powder you. | ||
| And I was just like, it's so, it's all crazy at every possible level. | ||
| Every possible level. | ||
| Yeah, it certainly is. | ||
| And then you couple that with, yeah, then I started coming back to New York regularly for Outnumbered. | ||
| And you couple that with the crime. | ||
| I mean, my goodness, like we report on it. | ||
| And then you also live it when you walk the streets and just all of my colleagues and friends. | ||
| Some have been. | ||
| One girl had mugged, she said, in a very, you know, nice part of Manhattan. | ||
| And gosh, Columbia, a young man just killed by a knife wielding crazy person murder. | ||
| I mean, it's it's just absolutely nuts. | ||
| I know you see it when you come. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy. | ||
| It's got a little better because it's the holiday season and people are walking around. | ||
| But by and large, it's just a different Manhattan than the one that I was in several years ago. | ||
| Yeah, you mentioned de Blasio before. | ||
| I mean, can you believe the blaze of horror that he's going out in now with these mandates? | ||
| It's like he's, as you said, he's now doing more draconian stuff than even Biden. | ||
| I mean, the federal court actually stopped Biden's mandates as we're taping this today, but now de Blasio is coming in with even more for New York City. | ||
| Yeah, and it's harsher. | ||
| It's worse. | ||
| So Biden said, OK, I'm going to target bigger businesses, 100 employees or more, which isn't necessarily a massive business, but I mean, bigger. | ||
| And then he says, you know, I'll give you four months to get vaccinated. | ||
| And then this guy, de Blasio, says you have till December 27th. | ||
| And both mandates are bad. | ||
| But the de Blasio one says kids have to be vaccinated. | ||
| And it's look, I was a part of Operation Warp Speed. | ||
| You know, I'm vaccinated. | ||
| But the notion that, as a parent, you would force me to vaccinate my five-year-old. | ||
| So it's not just me, but you're forcing me to do it to my child. | ||
| And if my child's not vaccinated, they can't participate in certain sports. | ||
| I mean, are you out of your mind? | ||
| This is so over-the-top overreach. | ||
| I've got to think it's posturing for a delusional Bill de Blasio who thinks he somehow has presidential hopes. | ||
| Right, so what are you gonna do? | ||
| I mean, your daughter's young yet. | ||
| She's not in that five to 11 or whatever the youngest range is at this point, but like, what would you do when you have to cross that moment? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I guess we'd have to see where we are several years from now, but most kids are totally and completely asymptomatic. | ||
| So the choice is, you know, when I vaccinate my daughter against measles, mumps, rubella, you think of an absolutely dire outcome that you're avoiding via vaccination. | ||
| And yes, certainly there have been children who have succumbed to COVID-19, but it is very small compared to the adult population. | ||
| Significant, of course, always any time a life is lost. | ||
| But yeah, you've got to weigh the risks and the benefits and the kind of calculation I'm going through. | ||
| It's called liberty to have a well-reasoned, educated decision, not have the government say, you've got to take a needle and vaccinate your young child. | ||
| What if your young child's had it and they were totally asymptomatic and have natural immunity? | ||
| You should be able to make an educated decision that that's enough protection against COVID-19, if you so choose. | ||
| If you so choose. | ||
| Give me one other story from the book that touches sort of on what we've been talking about here. | ||
| Yeah, there are a lot of good ones. | ||
| I mean, I think one your viewers would be interested in is, you know, you see Trump on the campaign trail and, you know, he would make these proclamations like, I'm going to get out of the Paris Climate Accord. | ||
| I'm going to get out of the Iran nuclear deal. | ||
| And, you know, the establishment would say, no, no, no, he can never do that. | ||
| He can't do that. | ||
| And we watched him come in and do just that. | ||
| And it was despite the establishment saying, you can't do that. | ||
| That would be a menace. | ||
| That would be a wreck. | ||
| Well, I saw it firsthand. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| I go into the cabinet room of the White House. | ||
| And there's this big-- | ||
| I think it's like a mahogany table with all of the chairs with the cabinet secretary's names. | ||
| And in this particular meeting, I was there. | ||
| Kellyanne was there. | ||
| The attorney general was there, Bill Barr, and some others. | ||
| And the President's sitting there, and I'm watching this debate play out about whether the DOJ should stay in the Obamacare lawsuits, saying Obamacare is unconstitutional. | ||
| And everyone's giving their two cents, and Kellyanne and Bill Barr said, Mr. President, you know, I just don't think the timing of this is right. | ||
| And there was an argument from some that, You know, in the middle of a November election during a COVID-19 outbreak, you don't want to be seen as opposing a form of health care, however ill-conceived Obamacare was. | ||
| And he looked at me and said, what are your thoughts, Kayleigh? | ||
| And I said, I have to agree with Kellyanne and Bill Barr, because Just politically speaking, I don't know that this makes a lot of sense. | ||
| And he looked at me and said, I will always stand with my base. | ||
| I will always be loyal to the promises I made to them, and I will keep them. | ||
| And it told me so much about him. | ||
| The guy you saw at the rally, who was so authentic, is the same guy saying the same things in the Oval Office or in a cabinet room full of advisors telling him to do otherwise. | ||
| And it told me leaps and bounds about, one, the kind of man he is, and two, why he is such a success in the conservative movement. | ||
| Was that kinda crazy to you? | ||
| I always joke about it, but it was like that this orange man with crazy hair was more authentic than any of the other candidates. | ||
| That if you put him next to literally any of the Democrats, you put him next to Elizabeth Warren, it's like who's more authentic? | ||
| You put him next to Pete, who's more authentic? | ||
| You put him next to Kamala, who's more? | ||
| It's like we all know, but yet it's such a strange comparison, I suppose, and yet that story perfectly tells it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, it is. | ||
| You wouldn't think so. | ||
| And I think initially when he was on the political scene, you know, I was an early supporter, but I supported Ben Carson before I got onto the Trump team. | ||
| But I will say, you know, politics for so long, it was you wanted the perfect candidate you thought could relate. | ||
| You know, poll tested Mitt Romney, who has just like the presidential look and, you know, sleeves rolled up and, you know, put him in a A shirt that makes him look relatable to the average guy, not like a billionaire. | ||
| He gets those two packs of shirts over at Costco. | ||
| What are they? | ||
| What are they called? | ||
| Not Westlake. | ||
| What's that brand? | ||
| That brand, whatever the Costco brand is, I can't think of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And then and then you have Hillary, you know, let's put up a woman and try to, you know, make her drink a beer. | ||
| She took a shot or something like there were just these poll tested moments or focus group tested moments that are that's what they seem like. | ||
| And then you just had Trump who owned it. | ||
| Hey, I'm a billionaire. | ||
| I'm rich. | ||
| That's the reason I should be elected because I created a multi-billion dollar business and I'm a businessman and I'm going to wear my suit. | ||
| I'm going to wear my nice red tie and I'm going to talk about my success. | ||
| And I think people just, they liked it. | ||
| It's authentic. | ||
| And they can see straight through the kind of mannequin politician moves that are of the pre-Trump era. | ||
| Kayleigh, I'm gonna announce next week why this interview was very special for me. | ||
| I can't say it right this moment. | ||
| I will announce it next week, but I'm so glad we got to spend a little time together and I'm sure I will be in the hot seat on Outnumbered soon enough. | ||
| And I wish you a Merry Christmas and all that good stuff. | ||
| Well, I cannot wait to hear this big announcement. | ||
| So I can't wait. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me. | ||
| Good seeing you. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about the media instead of nonstop yelling, check out our media playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out the full episode playlist. | ||
| They're both right over here. |
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